Tarsem Singh’s Opus Magnum is a breathtaking CGI-free visual feast, revealed through the imagination of a child (an astonishing performance by first time actress, five-year-old Catinca Untaru).

In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured movie stuntman (Lee Pace) begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm (Untaru), a fantastic story of five mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality blurs as the road trip tale advances, with hospital staff featuring in imagined roles, a similar device to that used in The Wizard of Oz (see 29 March).

Singh largely financed the film – shot over four years in more than 20 countries – with his own funds, determined to make the film according to his own vision, paying cast and crew on an equal basis rather than in more typical Hollywood fashion.

It is the gentle intimacy of the interactions in the hospital between actor Pace and Untaru that dazzle as much as the epic photography and scenes of the girl’s imagination, which play out as a mind-blowing sequence of increasingly bravura set action pieces. Director Singh, known for big budget advertising and music videos, confidently delivers a very personal project that knows no boundaries, and it is all the better for it. A rare gem.